Anyone who knows me knows I respect all Americans, despite color, creed or other convictions.
I also believe in empowering and protecting all Americans, from the youngest to the oldest. That includes from the womb to the tomb. Human life is supreme above all else.
My wife, Gena, and I are fully aware how sensitive the abortion issue is. We really do. We’ve known many people who have struggled through this life-changing decision, and we’ve been there for them. We respect all peoples’ views and beliefs, but we also ask people to respect ours as well, especially if and when they differ from theirs.
This Mon., Jan. 22, marks 51 years since abortion became legal across the United States.
On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court declared their decision regarding the case of Roe v. Wade, when the highest court in the land ruled 7-2 that individual state laws banning abortion were unconstitutional. From that point onward, abortion-on-demand was legalized in all 50 states. (That is, until Roe was overturned in June 2022 by the U.S. Supreme Court.)
In our viewpoint, Jan. 22, 1973, was the worst day in American history because it legalized killing babies in the womb. Abortion should have remained a legal issue for states not the federal government, as the tenth amendment in our U.S. Constitution guides.
Eleven years later, on Jan. 13, 1984, President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation designating Jan. 22 as the first National Sanctity of Human Life Day. (Ever since, every year, tens of thousands of churches continue to recognize the third Sunday in January as a day to commemorate the high value of human life from the womb to the tomb.)
It is staggering to think that, since 1973, over 65 million innocent humans and Americans have lost their lives in the womb due to being aborted or terminated by their parent.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is, as the Guardian reported, “Since Roe was overturned in 2022, 14 states have enacted near-total abortion bans, while two states – Georgia and South Carolina – have banned abortion past roughly six weeks of pregnancy. Other states have enacted laws or held ballot referendums to protect abortion rights.”
In our viewpoint, the overturning of Roe in June 2022 was the best day in American history because it will save countless millions of babies lives in the womb, now and in the future.
Where people land on abortion rights depends largely on how they view human life in the womb. Today, people – in particular younger people (students) – aren’t taught the scientific proof for human life inside the womb. Instead, they’re taught there is no proof. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I was talking recently to an anthropology professor about the conception of life, and he shared with me some very fascinating information from Dr. Dianne Irving, a biochemist and biologist who is a professor at Georgetown University.
She wrote this about the scientific evidence for human life in the womb:
To begin with, scientifically something very radical occurs between the processes of gametogenesis and fertilization – the change from a simple part of one human being (i.e., a sperm) and a simple part of another human being (i.e., an oocyte – usually referred to as an “ovum” or “egg”), which simply possess “human life,” to a new, genetically unique, newly existing, individual, whole living human being (a single-cell embryonic human zygote).
That is, upon fertilization, parts of human beings have actually been transformed into something very different from what they were before; they have been changed into a single, whole human being. During the process of fertilization, the sperm and the oocyte cease to exist as such, and a new human being is produced.
To understand this, it should be remembered that each kind of living organism has a specific number and quality of chromosomes that are characteristic for each member of a species. (The number can vary only slightly if the organism is to survive.)
For example, the characteristic number of chromosomes for a member of the human species is forty-six (plus or minus, e.g., in human beings with Down’s or Turner’s syndromes). Every somatic (or, body) cell in a human being has this characteristic number of chromosomes. Even the early germ cells contain forty-six chromosomes; it is only their mature forms – the sex gametes, or sperms and oocytes – which will later contain only twenty-three chromosomes each.
Sperms and oocytes are derived from primitive germ cells in the developing fetus by means of the process known as “gametogenesis.” Because each germ cell normally has 46 chromosomes, the process of “fertilization” cannot take place until the total number of chromosomes in each germ cell is cut in half. This is necessary so that after their fusion at fertilization the characteristic number of chromosomes in a single individual member of the human species (46) can be maintained.
To accurately see why a sperm or an oocyte are considered as only possessing human life, and not as living human beings themselves, one needs to look at the basic scientific facts involved in the processes of gametogenesis and of fertilization. It may help to keep in mind that the products of gametogenesis and fertilization are very different. The products of gametogenesis are mature sex gametes with only 23 instead of 46 chromosomes. The product of fertilization is a living human being with 46 chromosomes. Gametogenesis refers to the maturation of germ cells, resulting in gametes. Fertilization refers to the initiation of a new human being. [Underline mine]
Dr. Edmund D. Pellegrino, physician, bioethicist, senior research scholar of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, adjunct professor of philosophy at Georgetown, and also the former director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Ethics and founder and John Carroll Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics, of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University, emphatically stated: “The life of the unborn is of equal value to the life of the mother, and any law that disregards this is unjust and must be opposed.”
Dr. Jerome Lejeune, famous French pediatrician and geneticist, a member and laureate of many international academies, universities and scholarly societies, from which he received countless awards like the Griffuel Prize for his pioneering work on chromosomal anomalies in cancer, rightly said, “The right to life is the first right mentioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Every human being, born or pre-born, is entitled to this fundamental right.”
That is why Thomas Jefferson explained in the founding of our country that preserving human value and life was government’s primary role: “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”
It is also the reason that Jefferson created and penned in his own hand the words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government. …”
We pray the Biden administration would wake up to Jefferson’s wisdom instead of expanding access to abortion as he has done, and he pledges to expand it even more if he remains president.
As long as Americans are re-learning how to respect and get along with one another, and even agree to disagree agreeably, maybe it’s high time we re-evaluated the worth of every human, and that includes the value we give to the voiceless in wombs, too.
Whether in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, or in any other cities across every state of our union, we shouldn’t justify violence to humans outside the womb or inside the womb. Instead, we should esteem all human life from conception to the grave.
The inherent and enduring value of all humans is echoed in the Bible in Psalm 139: “For You, God, created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Or as the old classic 1800s spiritual put it:
Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.